Love Story Like Ours Needs A Corny Title
by Nerva al'Thor
Summary: (One-shot; Complete) (Modern AU setting) (ShiItaShi) Fifteen years, 3 months, 2 days and 1 hour. Shisui never lost track of all that time. Itachi did not either.


**Love Story Like Ours Needs A Corny Title**

* * *

_For Etch, whose portrayal of Shisui in Tumblr has given rise to this story. Visit his site at shisuiofthefuckingmirage at tumblr dot com._

_...And also for Chi, with her OC who made an unwitting cameo in this piece._

* * *

I always get nervous whenever my boss sends me to this house to talk to the two men living in it. For one, I don't have my boss's genius and I still get nervous around the two, despite misgivings, despite the fact that I've litigated for them in the past and never lost them a case. I don't know, maybe I'm weird that way. I'm an unassuming woman. I stand at a mere 5'3, always dressed in your usual corporate attire, armed with a briefcase, my laptop, a copy of the organic law and my glasses.

Saint Lucia is a beautiful place to live in. While I get nervous being sent here everytime by my firm, Kurotsuki and Associates, I do enjoy the view. I don't bring along a company car, as always, since I've used the jet. I just flag a local taxi that drives me to the Dauphin quarter of the island, this corner of greenery and peace, and during the peaceful drive I admire the view, forgetting my work.

The house is huge, located seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of all the green surrounding it, and it fronts the spectacular view of Dauphin Bay. My boss said that the two men bought the entire Dauphin quarter because the local government cordoned off the place for preservation, but these two, especially the older one, didn't know how to take no for an answer.

I pay my taxi driver and got off his cab, and I took in the house's features – built in a modern style, four floors – colors of gray with a clever mix of mahogany, and huge glass windows – armored, of course – privacy sealed off with plain canvas blinds. Outside the house looks like a block, an alien among all the green, and just by its left side was a shuttered garage. Their lawn is spacious, littered with sculptures of dog balloons and zombie garden gnomes. They have plants here, mostly roses and globe amaranths. If you circled the house there's an L-shaped pool and some beach benches with umbrellas, and a huge steampunk dragon sculpture ordered off thisiswhyimbroke.

I walk to the perfectly varnished door and hesitate to ring the doorbell that's made to resemble the head of a gargoyle. The gargoyle's tongue is the buzzer and I press it, and inside the vast house elevator music announces my arrival.

* * *

Shisui Uchiha opens the door for me, and he greets me with a sin-slicked, lopsided smirk, and ushers me inside. I bow over and over, apologizing for the earliness of my arrival. He brushes it off – he stands at 5'8 to 5'9, and currently he's shirtless, his curls tumbling ungracefully on his head, and he's smoking off a Japanese silver pipe that I know is Itachi's. Shisui wears a low-slung pair of jeans, faded and blue and gray in patches, artfully torn and wrinkled, and his fly is open, revealing red, red briefs, Calvin Klein. I'm not flabbergasted. I've come here before, and I've caught him and his husband in less than desirable and compromising levels of nudity and sexual positions.

I'm led to the spacious living room, minimalist, with only a black L couch and several beanies littered there. Their table looks like an odd puddle of water, the glass was shaped like that. I sit down on the couch and admire the lone, gigantic black-and-white portrait on the wall, a picture Shisui took – it was a picture of Itachi when he was 10 or 11, smiling at the camera. A perfect shot. Then from the picture my gaze wanders to the high ceiling and I note the beer bottle chandelier – a gift to them from one of my bosses, Hidan. Shisui has always said it was some sort of pun with his previous drinking habits.

Shisui soon joins me, and he puts a tray down on the puddle-of-water table. There's an elegant looking teapot – Itachi picked, I'm sure – and three cups. Shisui pours the tea first before sitting down ungracefully on the beanie across me, and grins at me. I grin back.

"Where's Itachi?" I ask.

"Ita-chan's cooking, says you can go have tea for now and like, lunch is ready soon."

"Thanks, you two always feed me fit to burst."

"We have too much food in this place, and Ita-chan and me, em, we don't really eat much."

"I noticed," I laugh. Shisui laughs along.

I take my cup of tea with a murmur of gratitude and sip the warm drink – rose, my favorite – and I can't help a small sigh. Shisui puffs smoke out his nostrils.

"Can never stand tea. And coffee," he says.

"But you can't drink now,"

"Not can't. Chose to stop. Ita-chan said so."

"What do you drink now?"

"Em, soda. Fruit juices. He blends fruit for me. He tried to make me vegetable juice once but I spat it out."

I smile.

* * *

A soft voice calls us both to the kitchen. I sort my papers out and as I do, Shisui goes ahead, his bare feet padding on the marble floor as he disappears down the hallway. I put my documents hastily back in my brief case and follow him, and I'm led to a modern minimalist kitchen but with a more interesting mix of décor and appliances than the living room. For one, they have a gigantic, two-door amplifier fridge, which Shisui says he ordered precisely for their house, and that they were the only ones to have the two-door variant. The kitchen island is pure black marble, and there are two big lava lamps at the corner of the room. They were currently turned off. I sit on one of the eight bar stools around the island. Shisui is already seated.

Itachi Uchiha is the opposite of his husband. His long dark hair's left loose, and he's wearing an ordinary white long-sleeved shirt, buttoned close half-way. His sleeves are rolled up. He also sports a smart pair of khakis, but like his husband, he's barefooted. He turns from where he's putting food on octagon-shaped plates and gives me a small smile, which I return.

I looked at Shisui then. I've always observed that when he's around Itachi he tends to get a little lost – what I mean is, he looks at Itachi and there's this expression that comes over his face, like a ripple of water when a rock is thrown on a lake. I'm not good with descriptions. He watches Itachi for a moment, and his eyes reflect softness, and I don't know if he's aware of it but his lips curl into a smile – this is not a smirk, a grin, just this _smile_, and it's warm and almost foreign on him. He doesn't say anything. He just watches Itachi, observes.

Food is served – I recognize that it's a Czech dish, svickova, and I appreciate the effort Itachi put on the plating. I pick up knife and fork – silverware made to resemble both bamboo and flame, go imagine – and dig in only when Itachi is seated with us, beside Shisui, with his own plate of food.

* * *

I discuss business over svickova and a glass of Romanée-Conti. I tell the two about the Akatsuki's current status, about some assets and some of the cases Kurotsuki and Associates have recently won for them. I guess I should take this opportunity to elaborate on my job. As I've said before, I'm a lawyer working in Kurotsuki and Associates, and my firm is legal arm to the widespread criminal organization that's Akatsuki. Akatsuki is an old, old club, it's been around since the days of the samurai in Japan, and the Uchiha family runs it, since the last Uzumaki boss got himself killed in a shooting incident a couple of years before. My boss says the Akatsuki never really left Uchiha control. Right now, though, Itachi runs the whole thing, but he's given up his ring and it's gone to someone else. Shisui had a ring too, previously, but when they got married both he and Itachi sort of promised to each other that there would be no running around shooting people for them because they weren't getting any younger. I like to think of them as old men just waiting for their pension every month. But please don't tell them that, Shisui would shoot me.

Anyway, long story short – they're sort of retired, since they've given up their rings. They just manage things from the background and let the other guys – Hidan, Sasori, Kakuzu, Kisame, Konan and the other new members I don't know the name of – manage their own sectors.

I take out the papers from my briefcase again and hand them over to Itachi, who wears a simple but expensive pair of glasses before looking over the documents with a critical eye. I wait in silence for Itachi's opinion as I finish my food. Shisui leaves his seat, glances at the papers and goes to the fridge and asks me if I want dessert. I gamely ask if they have black walnut ice cream, and Shisui confirms. I ask for two scoops.

Itachi hands the papers back to me just as Shisui hands me my ice cream, and for a minute my hands are full. Itachi's signed all documents except one, and I let out an internal groan. My boss Ame would not be pleased, but all of us knew that when Itachi Uchiha refused to sign anything, then that anything was a lost cause.

I put my ice cream down and put the papers back neatly in their respective slots in my brief case. I gladly return my attention to my ice cream and watch the two sitting across me. Itachi has his ice cream on a saucer. Shisui filled a sizable Belgian waffle cone and was munching away like a boy. I note their contrasts – silent sophistication and chaotic childishness – and at the back of my mind I can't help but recall that they're married, and they're also first cousins.

I've been told that the Uchiha was thoroughly Japanese in many aspects, and one such aspect is strangeness. Now I don't mean to demean or insult anyone, it's just, it's true isn't it? The Japs are known for their strangeness. Way, way back, in the time of the samurai and the Meiji, I think, the Uchiha were not beyond marrying some in the family to keep their vast wealth in. Kind of reminds you of the Hapsburgs. But the Uchiha were more successful; they didn't inbreed much. Sure, there's some mental instability in the line, but they all remained physically pleasing to the eye, so the genes are well maintained, but not perfect. I'm also told there've been some special children here and there, but other than that, their gene pool was pretty much healthy.

"How are Naruto and Sasuke?" I ask as I finish my ice cream.

"They're all right," Itachi replies as he removes his glasses. He puts it down but Shisui picks it up and wears it, and Shisui grimaces and removes it from his face.

"Your eyesight is so bad," Shisui comments, taking his husband's attention from me and the topic I breached.

"Yes, I know."

"Like, why not get that lasik thing? You've been putting it off for god knows how long."

"I will."

"We better get that done like, this week. Your glasses gave me a headache."

"Mhm. All right. Call the doctor for me?"

Itachi and I watch as Shisui slides off his seat and goes back to the living room to look for his cellphone. Then Itachi turns his attention to me.

"They're all right," he repeats for my benefit. "They've settled in Milan. Naruto's in love with Italy. But Sasuke got a property in Vienna and he's told me he's convincing Naruto to give Vienna a shot in a year."

"Oh, wow, that's great, they're doing good," I answer. Itachi nods and also finishes off his ice cream.

* * *

Itachi and I join Shisui in the living room. Shisui is pacing, talking on the phone in fluent Japanese. I sit down on one of the beanies they have in the room, and I picked the one that had Lady Gaga's face on it. I like having Lady Gaga against my bum. Itachi sits on the couch and watches Shisui pacing. Like his husband, Itachi also has this habit of getting lost when he's near Shisui. But unlike the other Uchiha, his expression is unreadable – always have been, my boss Ame says to me – the only inkling you have is the flicker in his eyes. But flickers by themselves are very hard to read. There's one such flicker in his eyes now, as he watches his husband pace, as he listens to him talk, as he watches him gesture with his free hand.

"Settled," Shisui grins as he sits beside Itachi and kisses him on the cheek.

"Thank you," Itachi tells him.

"Like, I only made a phone call for you," Shisui kisses his cheek again.

"How did you two end up?" I ask, before I could help myself.

They both look at me. I suddenly felt awkward and almost shrank into myself at the joint attention. They weren't hostile, and the topic intimate maybe, but I've always wanted to hear their love story. It was complicated as fuck, Shisui once told me. It could be its own book, he also added. _Like, we could write a book, but I'm not good with words so like, Ita-chan would write it and we would sell it and it'd be hardbound and the cover would be pink with sparkles and gold letters and a heart on it, like and maybe our pictures? Ita-chan would hate that._

I smile, showing my interest in the topic. Itachi looks at Shisui. Shisui looks at Itachi.

"You tell her your half, I tell mine," says Itachi.

"Okay," Shisui grins.

* * *

For Shisui, of course, they actually met when Itachi was born, or to be more accurate, the day after he was born, when Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha sent out the formal invitation to the family members. Itachi was born in Kyoto, and the hospital was of course the best, and only five people at a time were allowed in the room. He'd gone there with his mother Kaede and father Kagami, and two other relatives, and Mikoto had been sitting up in bed and holding the little bundle of joy. Shisui says he'd coined the nickname Ita-chan at that moment, some sort of instinct, the words forming in his mouth and exiting his lips. The nickname would stick to Itachi for the rest of their lives.

Next they'd met at those formal family gatherings that Shisui hated. He says he hated those because his mother would always stuff him in a suit, and there came Itachi wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants like nobody's business and Shisui took a liking to him and they became best friends. Itachi takes that opportunity to correct his husband's words and says to me that Shisui's way of befriending people involved stalkerish behavior, so you really had no choice but to accept the friendship. Shisui scowled at that and denied it, and Itachi shushes him with a light pinch on his side that makes him yelp.

They skip the tragedy that happened. I didn't need telling about that. I saw the news clippings in microform. Shisui also skipped the sadder parts of their youth, at least the parts pertaining to Itachi and Sasuke. Itachi is silent beside him but obviously grateful. How do you move on from that exactly? He saw his parents killed. He'd never had the proper therapy, the proper psychological help. I could understand. This scarred him for the rest of his life, and led him to scar others. But he'd picked himself up. They both did. And that made me happy, especially seeing the two of them like this.

Shisui now tells me how they got together. _He seduced me, right, like, I was high with pot and here he comes…_

Itachi takes a moment to drop his gaze, I assume from embarrassment. They keep the details as vague as they can, but the fact remained Itachi was 13 then, and Shisui 19. The first time I heard this part of the story, my natural reaction was disgust. Then again, as time went on, as my own ideals ebbed with the line of my work, I viewed the story with interest. The Uchiha is a strange family. Always keep that in mind. For an old family that built its wealth on underground crime and arms trade, some things were bound to screw up. Itachi and Shisui were brought up the best their parents could manage but the canvas was already imperfect in itself.

They broke up then, after 3 months. Shisui says he lost Itachi for fifteen fucking years.

"I never stopped loving him," Shisui says as he holds Itachi's hand, and twines their fingers together. He's looking at him as he says this. Like I've become insignificant, that I didn't sit there in the room with them. "Found myself lucky for a glimpse of him some years later, he was in a limo, he was looking happier and I told myself I'd be happy too if he was, all that matters is him, I don't care what he says, what he's made me into, I'm just me and I'm not perfect, am built soft and like, I get wounded even if I do nothing I'm like that. So like I lost my job with the police and started on the drugs and fucked whoever, I tell him he should blame himself for none of that. He never listens. Ita-chan, why?"

Itachi lifts their joined hands and kisses Shisui's knuckles. His eyes mirror the words he doesn't say.

_Because it's my fault. If I didn't push you, if I didn't leave, if I didn't discard you like an old shoe, if I didn't, if I didn't, if I didn't. _

* * *

Itachi speaks about his half of the story in the soft voice he's been well-known for, and his tone always had this soothing thing in them and I love listening to his fluent and flawless English. Their hands remain joined, and he tells me things I've known – he was in the Akatsuki when he was 13, given a ring by the late Nagato Uzumaki, and he was a fuck up in those days, a drug addict and a whore and pretty much in it for money he could send to Sasuke, whom he'd abandoned once his world came crumbling down. Still I listen, and I reflect on my own life, my perfect little life raised in a home with parents who never thought of divorce, my life cloistered in years of schooling and perfecting grades and earning medals enough for me to get into Yale and finish at the top 3 of my batch. I reflect and I realize my little petty griefs and sorrows were nothing compared to what these two men before me had. You couldn't blame them for being the way they were. Their lives were made complicated by mistakes, wrong choices, peer pressure, murder, the family that stifled them since they could both walk. Somehow listening…you understood. I understood. I did.

He'd married Konan at some point, Itachi did. He tells us that he supposed he looked for Shisui in her – looked for that bit of unpredictability, the ill-concealed rage, the whimsical things, but Konan was more of himself, and Itachi didn't like it, she was mirroring him and he was out of the marriage faster than he could think about things. Another bad decision, he says, with a soft chuckle.

"We met again by accident, fifteen years later, at a Mini Stop," Itachi continues. There is a soft, fond smile on his lips. Shisui beside him is also grinning. "It was raining. I asked Deidara to drop me off and I could commute, or walk home from there. He was there trying to steal alcohol and cigarettes. I came in just as he was trying to escape, and there we were again."

"I tell ya we are fucking soulmates," Shisui interjects. "Why else would we meet like that? After fifteen fucking, hellpit years. Ain't coincidence, I tell ya, Ita-chan. Like, I always used to say, we were soulmates but God fucked up and made him not see. I was convinced we were meant to be when I saw him again. Ya don't run into someone like that, in that place, it happens only in the movies."

"He's a sap," Itachi tells me with a smile.

"I am a sap," Shisui confirms.

I laugh.

* * *

"Ya remember, Ita-chan, when like, ya stabbed me?"

"You were pissing me off."

"I was not. I was only wanting to ask ya out, and ya stabbed me."

"You blew the tires of my car."

"Ya shot me in the knees, how cruel of ya."

"You deserved it."

"How? How does one deserve being shot in the knees?"

"You were pissing me off."

"I was not."

"Were too."

"Was not."

"Were too."

"Was not."

"Were too."

"Was not, fuck you, Ita-chan ya asshole."

"Were too, you whoring son of a bitch."

* * *

They got back together after doing a job for a week in Turkey. Shisui says it came naturally for him, he's loved Itachi forever, all his life, and he crossed the distance again and Itachi met him half-way. The rest, Itachi says, is history I already know like the back of my hand. He's fixed things with Sasuke and the brothers are in good terms as before. Sasuke and Naruto got married ahead of them.

"Were there any complications, after that, after getting back together?" I ask.

There was one big complication. Their Uncle Madara, they tell me, the greatest asshole in both their lives. Itachi looks at Shisui then, asking him for silent permission regarding something he wishes to tell me, but Shisui doesn't give the permission and scowls darkly at the floor. I tell Itachi it's all right, and he turns to me with that quiet smile, and says instead that Madara was responsible for most shit, like the death of his mother and father, because Fugaku had been too ambitious too soon for Madara's tastes and wanted to run for Prime Minister of Japan. Itachi says that was how he'd originally marked the road's end for him. He would kill Madara or die trying, and take the bastard with him. He didn't want to involve Shisui anymore, like how he didn't want to involve Sasuke. Shisui interrupts him at this point, saying there was no way in the godforsaken earth he was going to lose the love of his life again, and that they were going to do this together and live.

"We had a civil wedding beforehand," Shisui explains. "Like Minato and Kakashi were sort of rushed witnesses just so the judge wouldn't ask us questions, or I'd shoot him if he pissed me off enough."

"We lived," Itachi says to me. "And here we are."

"Our wedding was awesome," Shisui tells me. "We got married in the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva. We even had the Spice Girls flown over. I fucking love the Spice Girls, I tell ya that, right? We got us the Royal Penthouse Suite, and I jumped on the bed for four hours."

"I told him if he broke the bed I wasn't paying for it," Itachi murmurs.

"I didn't break it, like, it only creaked but only just that."

"Mhm."

"Only Ita-chan didn't want them nude waitresses and the doves flying through hoops."

"If the doves took a crap on the heads of the guests, that would have been embarrassing."

"…Ya have a point there, but hey, I thought they'd be cool."

"And _nude waitresses_, in _our_ wedding?"

"What?"

"Anyway, I told him no," Itachi says this to me now. "And if he wouldn't abide by my terms I would not marry him."

"But we were already married that time, Ita-chan."

I laugh. The two of them smile at me. And then Shisui shoots Itachi this look, this silent communication of gaze and gestures and kisses his hair, and Itachi leans into him.

"I love you," Shisui tells him.

"I love you too," Itachi replies.

I blush for the both of them.

* * *

"Your story ought to be made into a book," I say after a while. "I could write it myself."

"No fancy binding," Itachi tells me. "Just a plain paperback one will do."

"But give me a title," I say to the two of them.

"Love story like ours need a corny title, Ita-chan, what ya think?" Shisui asks his husband.

But I already had the title for the book. Shisui gave it to me unwittingly. And I'm sure Itachi would approve. As per his conditions, however, Shisui's idea for the fancy pink and sparkly binding and book cover would have to be scrapped.

I sit there and watch the two exchange smiles. I note their hands, their fingers twined, and the rings they wear.

Fifteen years, 3 months, 2 days and 1 hour.

Shisui never lost track of all that time.

And I knew Itachi did not either.

***Fin***


End file.
